I realize that the themes that come with SharePoint 2010 are not the most popular UI elements among designers, however when my company (and I suspect many others) implemented SharePoint we decided to go with very minimal branding — aka change the site logo and theme and call it good. We also allow site owners to choose their own colors so they can make their sites their own and to instill a pride in ownership.
So for companies like mine that allow site owners to change their site’s theme, I compiled this handy dandy reference chart that shows screenshots of all the out-of-the-box theme previews. This will allow you to quickly choose which theme you want, without having to preview every one of them. It can be difficult to imagine what the theme will look like when applied to your site just from the color box. I know you can hit the preview button, however that pops up a new window and ends up being a lot of clicking when you want to look at a lot of them.
Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom, because I’ve added a couple new themes that I created that you can download and install on your site!
Azure
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Berry
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Bittersweet
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Cay
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Classic
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Construct
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Convention
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Felt
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Graham
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Grapello
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Laminate
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Mission
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Modern Rose
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Municipal
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Pinnate
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Ricasso
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Summer
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Vantage
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Viewpoint
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Yoshi
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Custom Themes
In addition I’ve created a few custom themes that you can download. Below the table is a link to the themes and instructions for downloading and applying to your site. Enjoy!
Council
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Earthtones
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Insight
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Installing a New Theme to your Site
Follow the instructions below to download and install the custom themes above to your site:
- Click the link above and save the theme(s) you want to your hard drive
- Navigate to Site Actions > Site Settings > Themes (under Galleries)
- Upload the new theme file(s) to the gallery
- Navigate to Site Actions > Site Settings > Site theme (under Look and Feel)
- Choose the new theme from the drop down menu and click “Apply”
You’re done! Hope you like these free themes and also the reference guide for the out-of-the-box themes that come with SharePoint 2010.
This looks like a good option to have some beautiful themes. I was not impressed to one with Berry as yellow looks much dark, other than all combination looks good, especially the Earthtones.
Yeah some of the default themes are a little hideous, others aren’t too bad. Glad you like the Earthtones theme, that one is my favorite 🙂
Wendy,
Have you ever looked at http://bindtuning.com/cms/sharepoint/ ? My friend @Ganotti is using it at the Philly MTC.
contact me for a free theme if you like.
Sorry for the spam
Curtis
@curtisgion
Discloser: I’m an investor in Bind.pt the parent company of BindTuning and a friend to the founder and CEO Beatriz, export in responsive/adaptive web design.
I have seen these themes before and they look pretty cool! Thanks for sharing.
These themes look amazing. Are they available for SharePoint 2013 as well. I have just signed up for a free SharePoint 2013 site with http://www.cloudappsportal.com
Regina the themes for SharePoint 2013 work a lot differently. I haven’t had a chance to play around too much with them but I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff on the subject if you search.